Re: Debian participation into GNOME Outreach Program for Women
On Tue, March 26, 2013 12:00 pm, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> [ mail followup to: -women, please continue discussion there ]
>
> TL;DR: we've been invited to participate into GNOME Outreach Program for
> Women and I'd like to accept the invitation. To maximize impact, though,
> we need mentors and topics to complement the current GSoC tasks.
>
> ----
>
> GNOME Outreach Program for Women (OPW) is a great internship initiative,
> by GNOME, initially for GNOME internship only, but which has recently
> been extended to other FOSS projects. If you don't know about it but are
> interested in this conversation, please have a look at [1], and in
> particular at [2].
>
> [1]: https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen
> [2]:
> https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#For_Organizations_and_Companies
>
> A couple of days before my trip at LibrePlanet, I've been contacted by
> Karen Sandler (Cc:-ed, in case I mess up something :-)) for inviting
Thanks, Stefano! I'm also ccing Marina in case she has anything to add.
> Debian to participate in the program. To that end we need (a) some money
> (entry level is ~5,500 USD for 1 internship), (b) internship topics, and
> (c) mentors. As one of my last act as DPL I'll be more than happy to
> approve using Debian money for 1 OPW internship, hoping it will prove
> successful and that we can expand our participation even further in next
> years. So we "just" lack b/c :-)
>
> At LibrePlanet, I've discussed the matter further with Karen and it
> turns out that, first, we have a bit more time for the internship topics
> than the strict timeline suggests: application deadline for interns is
> May 1st, it'll be enough to have topics/mentors around April 10th. Also,
> it is quite comment, and welcome, to have some overlap with GSoC that
> will be ongoing during the same period.
>
> We can for instance include GSoC tasks in the pool of OPW internship
> topics. Of course we should better not accept two students (1 OPW and 1
> GSoC) for the same tasks. But we can propose to worthy GSoC candidates
> to do the internship as OPW _instead_, or we can let them do their GSoC
> and "label" their participation as OPW internship.
To clarify a bit more: one of the advantages of this round of the OPW (it
happens twice a year) is that it's concurrent with GSoC. Applicants can
apply for tasks to be OPW and GSoC. That way, if someone seems really
great but they are not accepted for GSoC, we could accept them as just an
OPW participant. Also, it helps Debian get more women applicants (and more
applicants in general, for that matter) for GSoC, since women who might
not know about GSoC or who think that they're not experienced enough for
GSoC can be encouraged to apply for that as well. (This really happens.
Also, mentors who work with the applicants on their initial contribution
can help them strengthen their GSoC application making it more likely to
be accepted). It's nice for GSoC participants to be included as OPW
participants if they like, since it helps give them the infrastructure
we've developed for OPW.
> However, note that an important aspect of OPW is that there is no "code"
> restriction. So while I think we should *also* propose GSoC tasks as
> part of it, it would be way more interesting to add non-coding tasks to
> them, therefore offering a wider range of choices to OPW candidates. But
> for that, we do need topics and mentors. Could be anything useful to
> Debian, from coding to artwork, from communication to accounting, from
> management to packaging, anything that would provide a GSoC-like, but
> broader in scope, internship experience. And, the most important part,
> would help in increasing women participation in Debian, something on
> which we've been working for a very long time. (FWIW, GNOME's
> experiences on the usefulness of OPW are quite impressive, see
> LibrePlanet 2013 talk by Marina Zhurakhinskaya.)
Marina's posted her slides here:
https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/SpreadTheWord?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Outreach_LibrePlanet_2013.odp
>
> I don't feel like piggybacking this extra work, rather last minute, onto
> the shoulders of the GSoC admins. Ideally, this is something that should
> be coordinated by someone on -women, in coordination with GSoC admins
> for dealing with the cases at the crossing of the two initiatives.
>
> Anyone up to it?
Thanks for you all for all of the outreach and mentoring work you do for
Debian and free software generally!
We're incredibly excited for Debian to join the OPW :)
karen
>
> Even if you're not, but you do have internship topics and mentors to
> propose, please mention it. It might be good enough to have just a few
> topics in addition to the GSoC tasks, as long as we have mentors for all
> of them. In that case I might help with the remaining coordination part
> myself (but not with mentoring, sorry, I'm already taken for GSoC this
> year).
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Cheers.
> --
> Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
> Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
> Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
> « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
>
Reply to: